Meneera

Drip. Drip.

Meneera watched as the small crimson droplets splashed onto the ground. In reality you could barely hear a sound as each drop added to the slowly expanding pool of blood on the damp stone floor. But as each drop fell, the raven haired woman winced harshly, the scarcely audible splashes sounding like the deafening crashes of rain-engorged tidal waves to her despair-heightened senses.

Once more, she lovingly smoothed the brow of the head in her lap, brushing the graying hair lightly to the side. The body lay ten feet away from where she was huddled in the courtyard; her dress was quickly soaking up the gore seeping from the neck of her father’s detached head. Using her sleeve, she rubbed lightly at his silver helmet, making the small insignia on the front plate shine like a star in the moonlight. It was the silhouette of a blood soaked sword with the sun setting behind it: the national emblem of Sulma. His country. Her country.

She slowly stood to her feet, the puddle of her father’s bodily fluids sitting on her lap running down her dress, leaving sticky rivulets of red and brown streaking her gown. Looking down at the hate-filled expression on the head in her hands, her own face contorted. With a growl of rage she threw the head of her king, her father, her corpse, away from her. It smacked into the courtyard wall like a slab of raw meat and rolled on the ground, the lifeless face staring at the heavens with its eternal grimace.

Blind to the thousands of dead bodies surrounding her, Meneera stared with glazed eyes at the wall in front of her, her uneven breaths blowing her wavy hair away from her mouth in ragged bursts.

The servants tiptoed into the courtyard, carrying torches to drown the shadows. Whispers floated throughout the night. The King was dead. All that was left was the Princess, the Queen, the new Ruler of Sulma. Wordlessly, they knelt onto the bloodstained ground and placed their heads at the feet of the carcasses.

The Queen suddenly turned, her icy blue eyes now glazed over and white. Without a sound, she glided through the thousands of prostrate bodies, the dead outnumbering the living. The Queen of the Darkness. The Lady of Night. Her pale skin glowed in the starlight.